UVA's 16.8% Acceptance Rate Splits Two Different Ways

The University of Virginia's published acceptance rate for the Fall 2024 entering class was 16.81%: 9,909 admits out of 58,951 first-time, first-year applicants, straight from UVA's own Common Data Set. That single number is what shows up in rankings and news stories, and it's a poor guide to your own odds for two separate reasons. First, UVA reports a public university's residency split, and the gap is wide: in-state applicants were admitted at 25.93%, out-of-state applicants at 13.83%. Second, and less publicized, the school you apply to inside UVA matters almost as much as where you're from: Engineering admitted 17.71% of applicants in the same entering class, Nursing admitted 8.88%. Both splits are real, both come from UVA's own data, and neither shows up in the 16.8% headline.

Where You Live

UVA's Common Data Set breaks applicants into three residency categories. Here's the full Fall 2024 breakdown, with the Fall 2023 entering class for comparison.

In-state applicants were admitted at nearly twice the rate of out-of-state applicants in both years, 1.88 times as often in Fall 2024 and 2.09 times as often in Fall 2023. The in-state advantage narrowed slightly year over year, driven mostly by the in-state rate itself dropping (27.58% to 25.93%) while the out-of-state rate held roughly flat. International applicants had the lowest admit rate in both cohorts.

What You Apply To

The second split lives one level below the university-wide number, and UVA's Common Data Set doesn't report it. This breakdown comes from a different UVA publication: the Office of Undergraduate Admission's Counselor Profile 2024-2025, in a table titled "Enrollment Summary by Entry Program," covering the Fall 2024 entering class (Class of 2028). Its totals differ trivially from the Common Data Set's, 58,966 applied and 9,924 admitted here versus 58,951 and 9,909 in the CDS, a gap of 15 across both fields. That's normal for two internal counts pulled at slightly different times, not a red flag, but it's why this table stands on its own and isn't merged with the residency table above.

Engineering's 17.71% and Nursing's 8.88% sit on opposite ends of a 1.99 times spread, inside a class UVA describes with a single 16.8% number. One school worth noting because applicants routinely get it wrong: McIntire, UVA's Commerce program, isn't a first-year direct-admit option and doesn't appear in this table at all. Students apply to McIntire competitively after they've already enrolled at UVA, typically in their second year, not as part of the first-year application. If you're applying to UVA hoping to study business as a freshman, that admit rate doesn't exist yet, because the decision happens later.

Show the math: Every rate above is a straight division of admits by applicants from UVA's own tables. In-state: 4,269 admitted out of 16,464 applied, 4,269 / 16,464 = 25.93%. Out-of-state: 4,912 / 35,526 = 13.83%. Engineering: 2,056 / 11,607 = 17.71%. Nursing: 177 / 1,994 = 8.88%. Nothing here is estimated or inferred; both tables reconcile exactly to the totals UVA published for each source.

Applying Early

UVA offers a binding Early Decision round, and the Fall 2024 numbers are worth reporting because two separate UVA sources agree on them. The Common Data Set (Section C21) shows 1,245 ED admits out of 4,461 ED applicants, 27.91%. UVA's Counselor Profile independently reports approximately 28% for the same cohort. That's the same figure, one rounded, confirmed twice. Compare that to the 16.81% overall rate for the same entering class, and ED applicants were admitted at a meaningfully higher rate than the applicant pool as a whole.

Why This Happens

The residency gap and the by-school gap come from different mechanisms, and it's worth being precise about what UVA's data does and doesn't explain. UVA doesn't publish a stated reason for the residency gap in either the Common Data Set or the Counselor Profile, so the honest answer is that the data shows the gap without explaining its cause. What the numbers do show: the out-of-state and international applicant pools are each more than twice the size of the in-state pool, competing for admission alongside it, and larger, more national and international pools tend to be more competitive at the margin simply because more applicants are chasing the same finite number of spots.

The by-school gap has a more visible mechanism. Nursing and Kinesiology are smaller, capacity-constrained programs, 1,994 and 1,269 applicants respectively, where clinical placements, lab space, and licensure requirements cap how many students a program can admit regardless of how strong the applicant pool is. Arts & Sciences and Engineering are larger schools with more flexible capacity and, in Engineering's case, a smaller applicant pool relative to Arts & Sciences competing for a comparable number of seats. A strong applicant to a capacity-limited program can be turned away for reasons that have nothing to do with a weaker application.

What This Means for Your Application

If you're building a list that includes UVA, the school you select on your application, not just the university, changes your odds. Comparing Engineering's 17.71% against Nursing's 8.88% is a bigger swing than comparing UVA's overall rate against most other flagship public universities. Our free college list builder can help you see how a specific UVA school stacks up against the rest of your list before you commit to an application strategy built around the wrong number. Because UVA's ED round runs on its own calendar and admits at a higher rate than the overall pool, our application deadline tracker keeps ED and Regular Decision dates in one place so you're not tracking them by hand. And if you're an out-of-state or international applicant weighing whether UVA's residency gap changes how much weight to put on it in your list, a free strategy call is a low-pressure way to talk through where UVA fits.

The Waitlist

UVA's Common Data Set confirms it runs a waitlist, and the numbers show real movement, not a formality. For Fall 2024, UVA offered 10,470 students a waitlist spot, 6,759 accepted the offer, and 242 of those were eventually admitted. That's 3.58% of students who accepted a waitlist spot getting an offer. Fall 2023 looked somewhat better for waitlisted students: 8,899 offered, 5,114 accepted, and 320 admitted, or 6.26% of acceptances. Both years confirm the waitlist is a real, if narrow, path in, not a dead end.